IX
Eden Phillpotts has written some of the best detective stories in English. Not only has he proved himself a student of this type of literary entertainment, but he has brought to his task a lifelong experience in the craft of writing. The Grey Room was the first of his essays in this field, and, for all its unconventionality of structure, immediately took its place among the leading mystery stories of the day. This was followed by The Red Redmaynes (a more elaborately worked-out detective novel), A Voice from the Dark, and Jig-Saw. Both in craftsmanship and ingenuity Mr. Phillpotts’s detective tales — all of which are of a high order — seem intimately related to the novels of Harrington Hext — The Thing at Their Heels, Who Killed Cock Robin?, The Monster, and Number 87. (The last is a scientific mystery story rather than a straight detective novel.) Who Killed Cock Robin? is of conventional pattern and technic, but its adroitness entitles it to the first rank; The Monster, for sheer cleverness and suspense, has few equals in contemporary detective fiction; and The Thing at Their Heels, though ignoring the accepted canons of detective-story writing, must be placed in this category with an asterisk of distinction marking it.
A popular and prolific novelist who has long been regarded as a detective-story writer is E. Phillips Oppenheim; but while he has written several books of detective stories, they represent his secondary work, and have little place in a library devoted to the best of crime-problem fiction. Mr. Oppenheim is primarily a writer of mystery romances and stories of diplomatic intrigue; the latter, in fact, are his forte. Even in his best-known so-called detective books — such as Peter Ruff, The Double Four, The Yellow Crayon, and The Honorable Algernon Knox, Detective — the complications of international diplomacy and of the secret service greatly overbalance the criminological research and deductions that are essential to the true detective story. Nicholas Goade, Detective comes nearer to the detectival technic than any of Mr. Oppenheim’s other books; but aside from its being a careless and inferior work, it is filled with irrelevancies of a romantic and adventurous nature. Nor are its criminal problems of any particular originality.
Among the most entertaining and adroitly written of modern detective novels must be placed Ronald A. Knox’s two semi-satirical books, The Viaduct Murder and The Three Taps. These stories attain to a high literary level, and though the amateur detective of the first fails in his deductions, and the “murder” in the second proves to be a disappointment — both of which devices are contrary to all the accepted traditions of the detective-story technic — these two books sedulously and intelligently follow the clues of their problems to a logical solution, and unflaggingly hold the reader’s interest and admiration. Two other writers of marked literary capacity have tried their hand at the detective novel — Arnold Bennett and Israel Zangwill — with entertaining, if not wholly satisfactory, results. Mr. Bennett’s The Grand Babylon Hotel, though a detective story only through association and implication, contains several adventures that bring the book broadly within the detective category. Mr. Zangwill’s The Big Bow Mystery is more in line with the tradition of the detective novel, despite the fact that its theme contraverts one of the basic principles of crime-problem fiction.
Mrs. Belloc Lowndes has made two interesting and noteworthy contributions to criminal literature: indeed, any review of the more important detective stories would be incomplete without an inclusion of her The Chink in the Armour and The Lodger, the latter dealing with the famous Jack-the-Ripper murders. Burton E. Stevenson has also given us several first-rate detective novels of orthodox pattern — The Halladay Case, The Gloved Hand, The Marathon Mystery, and The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet — the last being particularly well conceived and executed. Edgar Wallace has written too much and too rapidly, with too little attention to his problems and too great an insistence on inexpensive “thrills”, to be included in the roster of the ablest detective-tale authors; but The Clue of the New Pin — one of his earlier books — should be mentioned here because of the ingenious device used by the criminal to escape detection. Arthur E. McFarland’s Behind the Bolted Door? is another detective novel which contains an entirely novel (so far as I know) device; and the interest of the story is markedly enhanced by Mr. McFarland’s journalistic competency as a writer and his thorough familiarity with the various factors of his locale. Marion Harvey’s The Mystery of the Hidden Room is likewise noteworthy because of the criminal device employed; and it should be added that the deductive work done by Graydon McKelvie is at times extremely clever. The four Ashton Kirk novels by John T. McIntyre — Ashton Kirk, Investigator, Ashton Kirk, Secret Agent, Ashton Kirk, Special Detective, and Ashton Kirk, Criminologist — are a bit extravagant both in characterization and plot, but they may be justly mentioned here because of their strict adherence to the Sherlock Holmes tradition and their occasional ingenuity of structure.
X
Fashions in detectives have changed greatly during the past decade or so. Of late the inspired, intuitive, brilliantly logical super-sleuth of the late nineteenth century has given place to the conservative, plodding, hard working, routine investigator of the official police — the genius of Carlyle’s definition, whose procedure is based largely on a transcendent capacity of taking trouble. And it must be said that this new thoroughgoing and unimaginative detective often has a distinct advantage, from the standpoint of literary interest, over the flashy intellectual detective of yore. He is more human, more plausible, and often achieves a more satisfactory solution of the criminal mysteries to which he is assigned. The reader may follow him as an equal, and share in his discoveries; and at all times a sense of reality, even of commonplace familiarity, may be maintained by the author — a sense which is too often vitiated by the inspirational methods of the older detective.
The most skilful exponent of this style of detective story is Freeman Wills Crofts. His The Cask and The Ponson Case are masterpieces of closely-wrought construction, and, with The Groote Park Murder, Inspector French’s Greatest Case and The Starvel Hollow Tragedy, stand as the foremost representatives of their kind — as much as do the novels of Gaboriau and the Holmes series of Conan Doyle. Indeed, for sheer dexterity of plot Mr. Crofts has no peer among the contemporary writers of detective fiction. His chief device is the prepared alibi, and this he has explored with almost inexhaustible care, weaving it into his problem with an industry matched only by the amazing industry of his sleuths.
A.Fielding has devoted his talents to this new mode of detective fiction with a success but little less than Mr. Crofts’. In The Footsteps that Stopped he has worked out an intricate problem along the painstaking lines of investigation characteristic of the actual methods of Scotland Yard; and in both The Eames-Erskine Case and The Charteris Mystery he has successfully followed these same methods. The Detective’s Holiday, by Charles Barry, is another good example of the plodding, naturalistic detective technic, enlivened by a foil in the presence of a typical French detective of contrasting subtlety and emotionalism. And Henry Wade’s The Verdict of You All is a first-rate story conceived along the same lines; but it breaks away from all tradition in the climax, and turns its dénouement into an ironical criticism of legal procedure — a device which had a famous precedent in The Ware Case by Gordon Pleydell. Two earlier capable examples of the detective novel of industrious routine are A.W.Marchmont’s The Eagrave Square Mystery and Mark Allerton’s The Mystery of Beaton Craig.
In the same classification with Crofts, Fielding and Wade belongs J. S.Fletcher, the most prolific and popular of all the current writers of detective fiction. Mr. Fletcher, however, carries his naturalism so far in the projection of his plots that his detectives are too often banal and colorless; and in many of his books the solution of the crime is reached through a series of fortuitous incidents rather than through any inherent ability on the part of his investigators. Mr. Fletcher writes smoothly, and his antiquarian researches — which he habitually weaves into the fabric of his plots — give an air of scholarship to his stories. But his problems and their solutions are too frequently deficient in drama and sequence, and his paucity of invention is too consistently glaring to be entirely satisfactory. This may be due to the frequency with which his books appear: I believe he has published something like four a year for the past eight or ten years; and such mass production is hardly conducive of conceptional care and structural ingenuity. But Mr. Fletcher has none the less played an important part in the development of the detective novel, if for no other reason than that he has, by his fluent style and authoritative realism, given an impetus to the reading of this type of novel among a large class of persons who, but a few years ago, were unfamiliar with the literature of crime detection. Mr. Fletcher s earlier books are his best; and I have yet to read one of his more recent novels that equals his The Middle Temple Murder published ten years ago.
It will be noted that the great majority of detective stories I have selected for mention are by English authors. The reason for the decided superiority of English detective stories over American detective stories lies in the fact that the English novelist takes this type of fiction more seriously than we do. The best of the current writers in England will turn their hand occasionally to this genre, and perform their task with the same conscientious care that they confer on their more serious books. The American novelist, when he essays to write this kind of story, does so with contempt and carelessness, and rarely takes the time to acquaint himself with his subject. He labors under the delusion that a detective novel is an easy and casual kind of literary composition; and the result is a complete failure. In this country we have few detective novels of the superior order of such books as Bentley’s Trent’s Last Case, Mason’s The House of the Arrow, Crofts’ The Cask, Hext’s Who Killed Cock Robin?, Phillpotts’s The Red Redmaynes, Freeman’s The Eye of Osiris, Knox’s The Viaduct Murder, Fielding’s The Footsteps That Stopped, Milne’s The Red House Mystery, Bailey’s Mr. Fortune series, and Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, to mention but a scant dozen of the more noteworthy additions to England’s rapidly increasing detective library.
XI
In the foregoing brief resume of the detective fiction which followed upon the appearance of the Sherlock Holmes stories I have confined myself to English and American efforts. We must not, however, overlook the many excellent detective stories that have come out of France since the advent of Monsieur Lecoq. The Gallic temperament seems particularly well adapted to the subtle ties and intricacies of the detective novel; and a large number of books of the roman policier type have been published in France during the past half century, most of them as yet untranslated into English. The foremost of the modern French writers of detective fiction is Gaston Leroux; in fact, the half dozen or so novels comprising the Aventures Extraordinaires de Joseph Rouletabille, Reporter are among the finest examples of detective stories we possess. Le Mystere de la Chambre Jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room), Le Parfum de la Dame en Noir (The Perfume of the Lady in Black), Rouletabille chez le Tsar (The Secret of the Night), Le Chateau Noir, Les Étranges Noces de Rouletabille, Rouletabille chez Krupp and Le Crime de Rouletabille (The Phantom Clue) represent the highest standard reached by the detective novel in France since the literary demise of Lecoq, and contain a variety of ideas and settings which gives them a diversity of appeal. Rouletabille is engagingly drawn, and his personality holds the reader throughout.
More popular, and certainly more ingenious, though neither as scholarly nor as strictly orthodox, are the famous Arséne Lupin stories of Maurice Leblanc. Lupin in the records of his earlier adventures is a shrewd and dashing criminal — “un gentleman-cambrioleur” — and therefore quite the reverse of the regulation detective; but he indulges in detective work — in deductions, in the following of clues, in the subtleties of logic, and in the solution of criminal problems — which is as brilliant and traditional as that of any fictional officer of the Sûreté. In his more recent escapades he gives over his anti-legal propensities, and becomes a sleuth wholly allied with the powers of righteousness. Some of the best and most characteristic examples of conventional modern detective stories are to be found in Les Huit Coups de l’Horloge. To the solution of the criminal problems involved in this book Lupin brings not only a keen and penetrating mind, but the fruits of a vast first-hand experience with crime.
Germany’s efforts at the exacting art of detective-story writing are, in the main, abortive and ponderous. An air of heavy officialdom hangs over the great majority of them; and one rarely finds the amateur investigator — that most delightful of all detectives — as the central figure of German crime-problem stories. The hero is generally a hide-bound, system-worshiping officer of the Polizei; and sometimes as many as three detectives share the honor of bringing a malefactor to justice. Even the best of the Germanic attempts at this literary genre read somewhat like painstaking official reports, lacking imagination and dramatic suspense. There is little subtlety either in the plots or the solutions; and the methods employed are generally obvious and heavy-footed. Characteristic of the German detective story are the books of Dietrich Theden — Der Advokatenbauer, Die zweite Busse, Ein Verteidiger, and a volume of short stories entitled Das range Wunder. And among the other better-known works of this type might be mentioned J.Kaulbach’s Die weisse Nelke, P.Weise’s Der Rottnerhof, R.Kohlrausch’s In der Dunkelkammer, and P.Meissner’s Platanen-Allee Nr. 14. Karl Rosner, the author of Der Herr des Todes and Die Beichte des Herrn Moritz von Cleven, is also one of the leading German writers of detective stories.
The Austrian authors who have devoted their energies to crime-problem fiction follow closely along German lines, though we occasionally find in them a lighter and more imaginative attitude, although here, too, a stodgy officialism and a reportorial brevity detract from the dramatic interest. Balduin Groller is perhaps the most capable and inventive of the Austrian detective-story writers: his Detektiv Dagobert is perhaps Austria’s nearest approach to Sherlock Holmes. Adolph Weissl (who was, I believe, a former official of the Vienna police) also has an extensive reputation as a writer of detective stories. His best-known, perhaps, are Schwarze Perlen and Das grüne Auto. The latter has been translated into English under the title of The Green Motor Car.
The other European countries are also far behind France and England in the production of this kind of narrative entertainment. Russia is too deeply sunk in Zolaesque naturalism to be interested in sheer literary artifice, and the detective novel as a genre is unknown to that country. Only in occasional stories do we find even an indication of it, although when a Russian author does turn his hand to crime detection he endows his work with a convincing realism. Italy’s creative spirit is not sufficiently mentalized and detached to maintain the detective-story mood; but Olivieri, in Il Colonnello, and Ottolengui, in Suo Figlio, have given us fairly representative examples of the detective tale; and Luigi Capuana has written several stories which may broadly be classed as “detective”. The Pole, Carl von Trojanowsky, has written, among other books, Erzählungen eines Gerichtsarztes; but this work cannot qualify wholly as detective fiction. There are, however, certain indications that the Scandinavian countries may soon enter the field as competitors of France and England and America. A Swedish writer, under the nom de guerre of Frank Heller, has had a tremendous success in Europe with a series of novels setting forth the exploits of a Mr. Collin — a kind of Continental Raffles — and several of his books have been translated into English: The London Adventures of Mr. Collin, The Grand Duke’s Finances, The Emperor’s Old Clothes, The Strange Adventures of Mr. Collin, and Mr. Collin Is Ruined. They are not, however, true detective novels; but the germ of the species is in them, and they indicate an unmistakable tendency toward the Poe-Gaboriau-Doyle tradition. Far more orthodox, and with a firmer grasp of the principles of detective-fiction technic, are the books of the Danish writer, Sven Elvestad — Der rätselhafte Feind, Abbe Montrose, Das Chamäleon and Spuren im Schnee. Elvestad also writes detective stories under the name of Stein Riverton. Then there is the popular Norwegian author, Oevre Richter Frich, whose detective, Asbjorn Krag, is almost as well known in Norway as Holmes is in England.